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Saturday, July 27: Heartwrenching photo captures compelling story

Planned bronze memorial of the compelling 1940 photo titled Wait for me, Daddy by Claude Dettloff will be an icon further demonstrating the wartime determination of one family, the service of the B.C. Regiment and the commitment of Canadians in trying times, a reader says.

Photograph by: Handout
, Vancouver Sun

The touching 1940 image captured by The Province photographer convincingly proves the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

An un-cropped picture shows what appears to be the entire British Columbia Regiment marching in “column of route” (with the distant rear of the column disappearing over the horizon) on their way for further training on Vancouver Island prior to Second World War European deployment. The dominating vignette of a photogenic Warren Bernard as a five-year-old boy running from his mother and reaching for his marching father (who to his son extends his hand but doesn’t break ranks) both tells an immediate emotional story and portends (within a world war) greater trauma to come.

Warren’s father Jack safely returned from the war but his parent’s marriage became a casualty. Happily, Warren grew to become an active community leader whose accomplishments included being Mayor of Tofino.

The planned bronze memorial will be an icon further demonstrating the wartime determination of one family, the service of the British Columbia Regiment and the commitment of Canadians in trying times.

This piece referred to “The increasingly shrill clamour of doubters who argue the world is cooling down”

Rajendra Pochauri, head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, James Hansen and others at NASA have long since confirmed that despite the agreed increases in CO2 in our atmosphere there has been no increase in average global temperatures for 17 years. Current general circulation climate models to be used in the coming IPCC Fifth Assessment Report find that 50-60 per cent of the warming since 1850 and since 1970 was induced by natural oscillations likely resulting from harmonic astronomical forcings. These are not yet included in the General Circulation Models (the most advanced tools currently available for simulating the response of the global climate system to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations).

I find it odd and also disturbing that here in B.C., the important debate on climate change never includes these reports.

James Lovelock, an eminent U.K. scientist and Nobel prize winner who devoted his life to the Green movement and was a constant campaigner for the global warming movement said this year “I bow head in shame” year for being such a bigot and being so dismissive of critics who challenged the IPCC and Kyoto. No mention of this in the media in Canada.

Serious scientists produce papers on this subject. These people cannot simply be dismissed as shrill climate change deniers. The implications of climate change are serious but the science is not fixed. The driving forces behind climate are still hotly debated within the scientific community.

I can’t believe the writer raised one of the biggest failings of CPP and expressed it as a plus. No matter how much you and your employer contribute to CPP on your behalf, which will likely be hundreds of thousands of dollars, the maximum death benefit your heirs will receive is $2,500. That’s a good thing? When you save on your own, whether in an RRSP or other types of accounts, all the money is yours and whatever is left when you die can be distributed any way you want. I can’t see how anyone could argue that this isn’t much better than CPP.

I am in total agreement with letter writer Shirley Taylor regarding the streets of Vancouver. I had the misfortune of recently walking from St. Paul’s Hospital via Davie to Yaletown. Along the route was an array of litter, dead leaves, cigarette butts by the hundreds and a sidewalk dearly in need of a complete wash down. The south side of Davie is an obstacle course for pedestrians, with potholes from a recent attempt at repairs, hydro poles, bus shelters, sandwich boards, patio fencing and more. The walk from BC Place to Stadium Station is also an eyesore, with weedy patches galore and the inevitable cigarette butts accumulating in the gutters.

It is evident the city managers do not move from their La-Z-boy office chairs to view their streets other than those that require a cycle path.

Planned bronze memorial of the compelling 1940 photo titled Wait for me, Daddy by Claude Dettloff will be an icon further demonstrating the wartime determination of one family, the service of the B.C. Regiment and the commitment of Canadians in trying times, a reader says.

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Canadian cities need to have an open debate about the risks and benefits of Chinese money — including “hot” funds brought in by corrupt officials — in Canada’s housing market, according to a former senior Harper government official.